AlterNet.org: Robert Beckerhttp://www.alternet.org/authors/robert-becker
enWhatever Happened to Using Boycotts and Constant Protests in the People's Fight Against Govt. and Corporate Power?http://www.alternet.org/activism/where-are-boycotts-and-protests
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Never before have so many activists commanded so many technological tools to corral like-minded millions into cohesive action. </div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><div><div id=":2s4"><div id=":2s3"><div text="#000000"><p>Where <em>are</em> the momentous, consciousness-raising boycotts of yesteryear that rose up against injustice, bigotry, or plain stupidity, to advance legal, civil and workers’ rights? Once upon a time high-profile uproars, some lasting years, brought down presidents, ended major wars, and remade national American priorities and values. Is such spirited activism, vs. the more legalistic modes now notching gains for marriage equality, as obsolete as quill pens? </p><p>With few exceptions, say Monsanto, the paucity here of policy-changing anti-corporate uprisings is all the more astonishing considering the moneyed octopus swells. And this dominance seems undeterred by challengers having, at our very fingertips, a limitless, low-cost communication network. Never before have so many activists commanded so many technological tools to corral like-minded millions into cohesive action. And yet, while trivial, celebrity inanities go viral, serious class and economic “viruses” endure uncontested.</p><p>What calamities remain that could trigger direct protests, by American consumers or street insurgents alike? Did tactical repression of Occupy scare off activists? Is corporate media ownership a reform death knell? Are we held captive, isolated, equating online petitions with defiant action?</p><p>I puzzle over the tepid response to the N.S.A.-corporate phone collusion scandal. Or lukewarm challenges to what the iconic John Lewis terms the Supreme Court’s “dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act”? How can entrenched Republican/corporate powers, so hypersensitive to shallow publicity stains (like Paula Deen), otherwise run roughshod, upping warfare against women or the misery of debt-laden college students, graduating into <a href="http://www.alternet.org/do-we-hate-our-children-insane-system-turns-young-adults-indentured-servants?akid=10643.147288.48mi8r&amp;rd=1&amp;src=newsletter863056&amp;t=3" target="_blank">adulthood as indentured servants?</a></p><p><strong>Education by Boycott</strong></p><p>For the record, illustrious boycotts introduced me not just to politics but this key threshold, that audacity of change demands audacious confrontation. Effective protests not only grabbed headlines for months but testified that collective folks, vociferous, organized and focused, can make history, even reverse entrenched powers by sidestepping electioneering or the Washington shuffle.</p><p>Certainly, ‘60’s civil rights triumphs built on the Montgomery bus boycott a few years earlier, a success that modeled how non-violent means could whip ingrained segregation. Thousands in 1955 boycotted segregated a municipal bus system and, after 18 months, triumphed when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Rosa Parks knew more about the Constitution than hordes of bigoted southerners.</p><p>Next up was America’s most successful, grassroots protest: the Delano-United Farm Workers table grape boycott, spearheaded by the charismatic, heroic Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. Imagine today, a grinding, five-long-year boycott that forced pigheaded growers to recognize workers and unionization, even that humane working conditions are rights, not gifts. The great, grape boycott aligned the poorest of migrants with consumers everywhere and in time grapes of liberation displaced grapes of wrath.</p><p><strong>Why Forgo Winning Plays? </strong></p><p>In the meantime, countless, ill-publicized boycotts assail suspect businesses and dubious government actions. <a href="http://www.boycottowl.com/view_boycotts.php" target="_blank">Boycott Owl site</a> lists hundreds of anti-company boycotts, many by disgruntled consumers but few with significant visibility. Is this mass media collusion at work, or are today’s boycott organizers less talented than earlier champions? </p><p>Are we less moral, less feeling, or less conscious – or all three – than protesters who raised the alarm, organized and got hands dirty until victory arrived? Look what it took to focus on Bangladesh’s mass killings after indefensible sub-contractors gambled on the lives of their own workers. How many scores of innocent school children will be sacrificed until the merciless guns rights god of the NRA is toppled? In fact, 1960’s corporations had less political might, paid higher taxes, and faced more oversight, state and federal, than greater behemoths today. Corporations like BP operate now as a law, if not a state, under itself, factoring in advance criminal penalties as “costs of doing business.”</p><p>Why not boycott obnoxious zealots who worship at the Citizens United altar, like rightwing casino magnet Sheldon Adelson (Las Vegas Sands or Venetian Macau Ltd.)? Why not singe the villainous Koch Bros. by not consuming Brawny towels or Angel Soft paper goods, Lycra clothing or Stainmaster rugs? When does Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy get stung for condemning gay rights as unnatural and immoral, inviting fire and brimstone from an angry God? How long would BP’s Arco stations thrive (or its Castrol, Aral, am/pm, Amoco, or Wild Bean Café brands) were enough consumers to drive, bike, or walk another block – and just say no?</p><p><strong>BP, No Better Boycott Prospect</strong></p><p>Indeed, BP is a terrific place to renew your boycott energy. Check out <a>Facebook BP Boycott</a>. We’re not talking industrial “accidents” but a rapid-fire, negligent plethora of fiascoes:</p><ul><li>BP’s 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion killed 15, producing a record-setting OSHA fine;</li><li>BP’s 2006 Prudhoe Bay oil spill, the largest on Alaska’s North Slope, producing a $25 million civil penalty, then the largest per-barrel penalty;</li><li>BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill, the world’s worst environmental disaster, dumping five million gallons of crude that polluted a seaway irreplaceable to people and wildlife. Mammoth penalties (beyond $5 billion already assessed) getting finalized under the Clean Water Act and the Natural Resources Damage Assessment, overall to top $42 billion, the largest corporate penalty ever. BP only plead guilty to 11 counts of felony manslaughter, two misdemeanors, and one felony count of lying to Congress. </li></ul><p>And there’s nothing “past” about crippling BP blunders: a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/us/louisiana-oil-spill/" target="_blank">40,000 lb. mat of oil spill tar</a> (165’ ft X 65’) just surfaced off a Louisiana beach, the tip of the 2.7 million pound iceberg of waste “cleaned up” since 2010 (is it “clean-up” if its lasts forever?). Poisoning extends far beyond the Gulf, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-bp-20130701,0,2579017.story" target="_blank">per the Chicago Tribune</a>: for years BP has exceeded by 20 times federal mercury dumping limits into Lake Michigan. If no ground-shaking jeopardy closes down such a serial blighter, the last, standing “sustainable” entity won’t be Mother Earth but an oil driller that racks up $25 billion in annual profits. Is BP also “too big to fail,” or too big and international to reign in from more devastation?</p><p><strong>A quick reminder, <a href="http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1264.aspx" target="_blank">simple, how-to kit for driving a boycott home</a> plus big, successful modern boycotts:</strong></p><p><em>1930: Gandhi’s March to the Sea defies the colonial British tax on commercial salt.</em></p><p><em>1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott: Rosa Parks’ arrest led to comprehensive boycott led by then-unknown Martin Luther King, Jr., ended 18 months later by Supreme Court’s agreement segregated buses are unconstitutional.</em></p><p><em>1960s: Grape Boycott: grassroots/community non-violent protest organized by the Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers highlighted plight of migrant workers, led to union contract and superior working conditions.</em></p><p><em>1980-90’s: Anti-Apartheid Boycotts: embargoed financial dealings with South Africa to defy racist “apartheid” policy. </em></p></div></div></div></div><div> </div> Tue, 09 Jul 2013 09:27:00 -0700Robert Becker, AlterNet866358 at http://www.alternet.orgActivismActivismboycottsPutting Lipstick on a Pig: 4 Messes that Sink the GOP's Dreams of Regaining the Presidency http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/putting-lipstick-pig-4-messes-sink-gops-dreams-regaining-presidency
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">How does a party of insular, rigid true believers, thrusting warlike middle fingers towards modernity, talk itself into modernizing?</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> <p>Beyond rightwing foment and self-flagellation, epic dilemmas bedevil all Republican dreams of regaining a national majority:</p><p>1) Fealty to manifestly discredited belief systems (cultural, economic, religious, and scientific);</p><p>2) Fealty to disgraced, ideological leaders whose arteries are hardening, rhetorically-suicidal and/or slow to get demographic “death spirals;”</p><p>3) Justified anxiety that “rebranding” different enough to engage newly-empowered centrists will alienate far more base zealots already feeling besieged from both sides. </p><p>4) Reactionary robber barons will keep afloat any “anti-business Obama” gang, whatever the setbacks, with plenty more billions to secure favorable permits, subsidies, laws, and deregulation.</p><p>In a nutshell, how does a party of insular, rigid true believers, thrusting warlike middle fingers towards modernity, talk itself into modernizing just because it lost one election? Aside from putting lipstick on a pig, where’s the miraculous (earthbound) agency that modernizes angry, resentful Tea Partiers whose outrage targeted the very diverse, younger, secular crowds now crowning the future?</p><p><strong>GOP loyalty to losers</strong></p><p>On point, unlike liberal losers who politely leave the stage (nearly all but Carter and Gore since 1980), Republican flops and misfits endure for decades, poisoning hate media and Sunday talk shows, even wreaking havoc across GOP primaries. That Newt Gingrich, or shameless, still illiterate Sarah Palin types get to harangue anyone beyond pets, testifies to the unholy resilience of party-wounding blowhards. In fact, Mitt Romney looks to be the exception by getting the quick boot, but then his staggeringly dumb remarks justify exile to the W. gulag. Dick Cheney gets more respect.</p><p>What close observer thinks that rightwingers will adapt simply because minority status looms? In fact, authoritarian control freaks live off opposition, especially from upstarts with darker skins with less money (thus moochers voting themselves ‘gift’ handouts). Face facts, as Mittens speaks for most Republicans (certainly hordes of over-compensated CEOs), his party is beyond “rebranding” but needing once-a-century reformation – or more devastating national defeats.</p><p>Further, since Tea Party fanatics would rather fight and lose than switch, they won’t abandon prime commandments. Certainly not 1) big government is bad government, except when killing enemies. Or 2) only low taxes guarantee growth and job creation (ditto, less regulations and red tape). That 3) states rights are still divinely-ordained (bring back the Civil War), or 4) Christianity is, let’s be honest, the world's best, truest religion. And, finally, what reluctant reformers doubt 5) free-market capitalism isn’t authorized by whatever Biblical texts defend profits, exploiting the earth, and infinitely expandable markets. Hands, anyone?</p><p><strong>Disasters only blessings in disguise</strong></p><p>Why should hard-hearted, religious fundamentalists, in lock step with economic fundamentalists called robber barons, reconfigure such magical thinking simply because unwashed minorities screw up popular elections. That'd be surrendering under siege, and good Christian soldiers reflexively distort momentary defeats into blessings in disguise, spiritual tests airmailed by God. After all, the big, cosmic truths are self-evident and fixed, and quick, selective historical readings proving majorities are far less perfect than the Good Book. Plus, the GOP is still armed and dangerous, knowing how to organize, collect billions, forge unanimity of thought, marry old-time religion with employment and regressive values, even do what Mormons once celebrated, “lying for the Lord.” For more on the narcotic of lying, see Amanda Marcotte’s <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/11/17/conservatives_crisis_of_confidence/" target="_blank">excellent piece,</a> “Conservatives’ crisis of confidence.”</p><p>Of course willful ignorance extends beyond politics, and the enduringly dumb war against science goes beyond secession chatter after a loss. Blithering idiots indict both the competence and honor of the entire modern science complex, snubbing reproductive and evolutionary biology, geology, anthropology, archeology, ecology, climatology, astronomy plus incontrovertible carbon dating. Nor do like-minded Biblical literalists hesitate to impugn the world’s greatest experts on language, scriptural texts, even independent scholars proving the “inerrant Holy Bible” was a calculated amalgam edited by fallible humans, promoting consensus-building, with marketable chapters that favor church expansion. Will those who defy this sweep of intellectual and moral advancement reverse entrenched fantasies because a black hustler, born who knows where, finagled his way into a second term? Is that the incentive to abandon all that wishful thinking driving glorious conspiracy theories?</p><p><strong>Doubt not conservatism</strong></p><p>Thus, two weeks of soul-searching and behold, bold and mighty breakthroughs: “Never give up conservative principles, just make them sound less offensive.” Back to the PR drawing board: “better pandering to key demographics.” The “great ideas of conservatism” are untarnished, ruined only by wretched pitchman, like that tin-ear plutocrat, or Karl “over-the-hill” Rove, or FOX goons aghast at actual election results. Rock-ribbed conservatives don’t need change but changed decoys that cover up failed mindsets and disaster agendas.</p><p>Forget rebranding: what addicts to unreality need is psychological intervention. But, alas, that only works when the dope fiends (in both senses) admit vulnerability (too much like sin), then accept input from trained, outside experts (sounds like trusting elites). That leaves only a course in miracles, but that's a longer shot still.</p><p>For ultimately the GOTP (Good Old Tea Party) doesn’t merely revere American Exceptionalism but Republican Exceptionalism. The right is doomed by the inviolate, mystical conviction of its own superiority. That’s what obstinate obstructionism is all about: truth is not open to discussion, especially framed by secular heathens. I’ll believe in rebranding when the GOP stops disenfranchising voters or backs off Congressional gerrymandering behind its dishonest majority, considering how many fewer overall House votes it received. I’ll accept rebranding when the right stops sabotaging majority rule with chronic filibustering. Since “rebranding” leaves unchanged all core assumptions, we’re finally talking shifts in public relations, not human or community relations. More's the pity.</p><p><strong>The GOP Proctology Clinic?</strong></p><p>So folks like Governor Jindal can wish away “the politics of stupid” but what about the politics of ignorance, the willful blindness that denies legitimacy to a re-elected president and unarguable electoral outcomes? Now wouldn’t that neat principle attract awakened minorities and women, profoundly offended by racist, anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-science ideologues? If true believers are open to adaptation, let's begin not only with immigration but climate change, fussing less about who caused what than what emergency measures are necessary to stem the tide.</p><p>We all search for evidence that real change is in the offing, on the right or the left, for that matter. To this end, I fervently second the cumbersome solution put forth by that stalwart Republican, Haley Barbour – his party demands nothing less than a “very serious proctology exam” that needs “to look everywhere.” Right, bring on those bloated, obstructed fat cats, kicking and screaming in high dudgeon. Karl Rove, first up, then Romney, Ryan and Rush Limbaugh. No videos, please, for even rationalists can only take so much reality.</p> Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:19:00 -0800Robert Becker, AlterNet748102 at http://www.alternet.orgTea Party and the RightTea Party and the RightgoprebrandingpoliticsTea Party Terror: An Unholy War to Gain Tyranny of the Majorityhttp://www.alternet.org/story/151957/tea_party_terror%3A_an_unholy_war_to_gain_tyranny_of_the_majority
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">We&#039;re in the midst of an unholy war by a minority of fanatics who take no prisoners, nor apologize for innocent victims.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Whether or not V.P. Biden tagged the Tea Party "terrorists," more sentient beings have dramatized their politics of crude intimidation with howls about ransom demands, hostage-taking, blackmail and extortion. The stolid NY Times' Joe Nocera condemned this "jihad against America" intent on "blowing up the country." Right, an unholy war by a minority of fanatics who take no prisoners, nor apologize for innocent victims.</p>
<p>We've gone way beyond states' rights on hot-button cultural fixations, even nullifying specific, objectionable "liberal" giveaways. Does not the manufactured debt fallout — nullification of government integrity — demand strong retaliation by the adults before this unholy war impales the ultimate casualty — it's the future, stupid? What defines a third world debtor nation more emphatically than obsolete infrastructure, no new growth industries or updated labor force, paltry education and research commitments, no master environmental, regulatory and/or energy planning? What distinguishes the Tea Party insurrection (and backers) from suicide bombers or unhinged shooters of House members or abortion doctors, is scope, funding, and organization — plus collusion with a radicalized GOP and the 87 rogues the rightwing shoehorned into Congress.</p>
<p>The first, worst casualty in this holy war — all policy contradictions aside — isn't just the truth but majority rule, the result of transforming government from gridlock to self-inflicted paralysis that kills the revenue potential that could solve any big problems. More or less, America was plodding along towards only moderate inequality when 2000 kicked off body blows against majority rule. The rightwing Bush-Cheney gang viewed majority will as a problem open to manipulation, rarely the solution or heart of America. Cheney scorned all polls.</p>
<p>Follow this calamitous storyline: 1) the Supreme Court wrongly trumps the 2000 Florida election when installing a minority president (in popular vote) who ends up widely hated. And why? Because 2) W. unilaterally, deceptively drags us into the Iraqi quagmire, then loses popular support when innumerable WH deceptions surface. Plus, 3) terrible wars plus terrible tax giveaways cost 3-4 trillion while shredding the budget-deficit. 4) On his own, Bush tortures innocents and abuses our civil rights — deflecting Congressional approval and in short order inviting public outrage. 5) Finally, while the middle-class gets ambushed by the criminal minority causing the Great Recession, the Supreme Court awards corporate treasuries the golden leverage only tinpot dictators inflict. Though highly unpopular, Citizens United only reflected the sabotage to the democratic spirit when the top 1% seizes 40% of assets and 25% of income.</p>
<p><b>Majority Held in Contempt</b></p>
<p>This survey only captures the high points of democratic low points, as endless wars are rejected by increasing majorities starting in '06. Not that that stops any of them in five years, in fact more get added, few with open debate or declarations. And I jumped over the Clinton Impeachment, the most high-handed act of minority arrogance in decades. And now, every time President Obama caves instead of fighting for the majority's clear agenda (quick war exits, public option-price controls-true health care reform plus Wall Street indictments), majority rule withers. Today's Tea Party's hissy fit simply finalizes the rout of democracy this decade as 20% drive the other 80% of us into double-dip recession, maybe worse. When has sustained minority rule — whether by white, male, slavery-accepting landowners in 1800, robber barons of the Gilded Age, ideological Supreme Courts, or economically-illiterate know-nothings — not produced unspeakable pain and suffering for the majority?</p>
<p>What makes the debt ceiling fiasco more onerous than Gingrich's 1990's political theatre — or racist '60's civil rights Senate opposition (eventually defeated), or reactionary assaults against FDR (turned back) — was its utter, needless absurdity. What was gained and how much was lost? Eventually, non-stop crusades that undermine the legitimacy of every Democratic president since LBJ — and now our credit ratings and chance to fight unemployment — torpedo Lincoln's ideal of government for and by and of the people — in short, our collective future. If Tea Party obstructionism is about 20% trumping what 60 or 80% want to do, the magnitude of permanent damage will be incalculable, making 9/11 a blip on the radar.</p>
<p><b>Majority Rule, the Soul of Democracy</b></p>
<p>Majority rule, and open voting (now under siege), are the only insurance against more top-down despotic control, whether military, financial, class, or oligarchic. The supremacy of majority rule precedes America and the Constitution, adjudicating what any one generation elevates to do-or-die status. Issues change, complexions change, personalities change, law and the Constitution change — but what republic survives this mortal blow? Even when the majority is wrong or mislead, or callously slow about human rights — today for gays — some absolute instrument must end debate, make decisions, and start action. Rule by majority, exactly like Churchill's view of democracy, may well be the most dreadful form of government, except for all the others.</p>
<p>What Tea Party insurgencies evoke for me, if sustained and widespread, are divisions we haven't seen in 150 years ago when the South seceded. What else, other than sharing history and this key value, better ties together our six very disparate regions? Today, radical Tea Party ideology disputes our core assumption — that the president and the majority (not white enough, nor religiously right) can and should rule wisely. That defines the ultimate Tea Party sabotage, way beyond the debt ceiling nonsense. Either we have majority rule or some self-appointed, minority, or "faith alone" gang rules. That's why Teavangelists are so dangerous, so inflexible in all their convictions any who disagree are condemned as treasonous, wicked, and/or foreign subversives.</p>
<p><b>Tea Party — Modern Confederacy?</b></p>
<p>Guess the percentage of defiant, white, southern, Confederates in 1861 — only 20% of all Americans. Not every one of the 5.5 million white southerners favored violent resistance, nor did all of the 22 million non-southerners adore Lincoln. What about the 3.5 million slaves? Whatever the complex causes of the Civil War, its start was anything but democratic or done by popular vote. No, an elite, plantation-slave owning gentry declared war via secessionist state houses. Lincoln wasn't about to end slavery, inflame the South, or use force to impose federal law — unless coerced.</p>
<p>Now guess the percentage of Tea Partiers in 2011. As polls range from 13% to 25%, let’s call it no more than 20%, too. 52 House members define the Tea Party caucus and another 35 join their fun. Now guess what percentage of the total 435 members that 87 represent. Bingo, 20%.</p>
<p>Not to overplay the comparison, but today's batch of older, white, racially-insensitive conservatives also assert less government is automatically good, federal taxation suspect, the U. S. president's a crass, oppressive dictator — and decentralization would solve all problems. Curiously, today's insurgents want to "take back their country" (just like southern Rebels), forever waxing nostalgic about fantasy golden ages (under Reagan). Not so different from earlier delusions of pre-abolition, ante-bellum plantation golden ages where happy slaves prospered because milk and honey flowed freely.</p>
<p>There is, so far, one great difference: millions were killed and maimed because the Confederacy took arms against its legitimate government. The two-year old Tea Party can't yet match those casualties in its war against the majority — and against reality. But it's still young. Check out <a target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 170); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; " href="http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party?source=newsletter&amp;utm_source=contactology&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110">the Michael Lind linkage</a> of "The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism," arguing "the goal, methods and passions of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right." Good rejoinder by Democratic strategist <a target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 170); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; " href="http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html">Ed Kilgore</a>.</p>
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<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter-->Robert Becker is a freelance writer and blogger at TheSmirkingChimp.com </div></div></div>
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 06:00:01 -0700Robert Becker, The Smirking Chimp667284 at http://www.alternet.orgTea Party and the RightTea Party and the Rightdebttea partyBackwards "Reasoning" is Destroying Politicshttp://www.alternet.org/story/151458/backwards_%22reasoning%22_is_destroying_politics
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">How sound bites and wedge issues allow a rightwing minority to dictate national policy.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>What! Cognitive research daringly posits our highest intelligence evolved in effect to serve the hardly democratic, Karl Rove credo that put W. in the White House, twice! That our vaunted human reason didn't specialize in problem-solving, nor elevating us from the jungle but this mundane result -- to win arguments? Forget truth, goodness, and the exceptional American way -- let alone the democratic affirmation that rational wisdom is enshrined in majority rule. Okay, I extrapolate to politics, but not by much.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Evolution aside, this explanation clarifies how politics devolved into theatre and stage-managing, how sound bites and wedge issues allow a rightwing minority to dictate national policy. Item: gerrymandered GOP House dominance, up to their ears in contradictions on taxes, deficits, job creation, the role of government, and imperialistic war-making. Politicized "reason" (and language amplified by media) now browbeats a critical mass into shouting the most palpable nonsense -- vs. inspiring critical masses to realize middle-class status is getting stripped clean.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hey, can progressives join this scheme -- funding entertaining, deranged Michele Bachmanns, think tanks pumping out partisan research, or a leftwing media to gull the gullible? Oh. We believe in education and enlightenment, even rationality, evidence, and wobbly evolution. To our horror, the modern era dramatizes what happens when reason, science and logic are depreciated -- Tea Party suckers (or worse extremists) fall prey to lower impulses -- fear, faith alone, prejudice, passions, instincts, or rapturous fundamentalism.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If true, this new psychology turns logic upside down, turning reason into just another "compulsion" that defines public opinion and remains open to the highest bidder. Conclusive proof aside (absent in the superficial NY Times sketch), this research suggests that rationality, the glory of secular humanism, did not evolve to defeat stupidity or superstition, even the vagaries of organized religion. Them's fighting words I'd think to the moral philosophers filling this site, though an idea helpful to charismatic columnists, politicians, lawyers, preachers, and teachers in the business to persuade.<p></p></p>
<blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By Patricia Cohen<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">. . . Rationality, by this yardstick . . . is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply it may depart from the truth.</p></blockquote> <blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Reasoning doesn't have this function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions," said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with Dan Sperber. "It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us." Truth and accuracy were beside the point.<p></p></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">This thesis raises more questions than it answers: did reason (elevating cause and effect, logic, methodology, continuities and patterns) not precede complex language (required for argument), which seems self-evident. When did brains conquer brawn -- not yet, by some standards? Would parsing facts occur to our half-dressed forebears? Did some early hominid fudge to convince the muscular, tribal idiot next door to share his wife and treasure? Wouldn't high attentiveness to pressing reality (hunting, warfare, threats) be critical to our survival, vs. making the group believe your spiel?<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If reason serves a "hard-wired compulsion," then our species remains at its core irrational, prey to winning verbal battles above all. Finally, why aren't other smart, sentient mammals, capable of problem-solving and tool use, thus awarded full status, as in souls? If reason didn't make better decisions about life and death struggles, what did, and how fast -- drugs, trance states, lightning flashes, mythology, or prophets talking with burning bushes on mountain tops?<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Undermining secular humanism</strong><p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The notion that our aggressive, self-centered species applied reason to dominate is no great surprise, testament to clever elites who rise to rule. Nor, for one trained in classical rhetoric, is the notion that argument (as in oratory) aims to persuade, whether done by heroic champions "on our side" or ruthless agents who deceive for their "higher ends." But early man must have trusted verisimilitude when survival depended on tracking reality, while avoiding lies -- that is a saber-toothed tiger, not a phantom, Iraq never had WMDs, and low taxes do not spur job growth.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Okay, team, if not reason -- and confidence in evidence, logic, methodology, with adaptive feedback to correct errors -- what distinguishes us flat-earthers who thought us the center of everything, let alone today's God-is-on-my-side types who know, thanks to divine messaging, one man-made book is literally, perfectly true, despite countless editions and translations. If secular humanists can't trust reason, imperfect as it is, what separates us from brutes, rocks, rock stars and Republicans pandering for president? Or allows us to brag about civilization, even dare harbor the glimmer of hope against disruptive Tea Party idiocy? No, no, I must refudiate such folly or despair.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Evolving, Debating Cavemen?</strong><p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Maybe the shrewdest cave-dweller influenced the strongman chief, like PR witch doctors do today. Our species obviously survived, likely by taking out competition. But that was far more about out-breeding, interbreeding and bigger clubs, not thought experiments or late-night cave orations. Further, how many of our much later geniuses won "their arguments" when first presented. Au contraire. Being smart, from Socrates through Galileo to Freud, was not fun for the original thinker.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Take Darwin, viewed as a loathsome, monkey-loving insurgent who insulted Victorian stuffiness by insisting hairy cousins whooped it up in trees. His nearly universal "law" of evolutionary biology, opposed still by current Neanderthals, needed a century of scientific verification. Few majorities anywhere (nor Nobel Prize Committees) honored Freud for elevating sexuality, internal conflicts, or unconscious motivations as he sparked a revolution (despite now discredited dead ends). Einstein's revolutionary theories relied on later experiments to validate counter-intuitive hypotheses (relativity, rethinking the "absolutes" of space and time). Climate change warnings appeared decades ago, and still the richest, greatest polluter on earth has no coherent plan to deflect devastation, with only the ultimate magnitude unknown.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Pen Mightier than Sword?</strong><p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As a writer, with others here, I harbor the delusion the pen is occasionally mightier than the sword. Certainly not my pen -- or anyone's as predatory swords, not reason, dominate our foreign policy. I'd like to envision rationality and majority rule overlapping once again, that is, before the Rapture; that someday we'll boast a leader who's smart, courageous, and principled, not just a high wire balancing act. If power doesn't respect our reality-based top brains at critical moments, our nostalgic fondness for reason, truth and justice will become a dusty memory.<p></p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If reason mainly serves "winning arguments," we are doomed as both "confirmation bias" (embracing evidence to confirm entrenched beliefs) and the "backfire effect" (doubling down insupportable positions when challenged) rule our thinking. One wonders how many zealots would forego defiance of evolution if species survival hung in the balance? How many fundamentalists would confuse the upcoming flooding from melting ice-caps, justifiably termed "Biblical," for a watery Rapture? Judging alone by America's massive denials and Bachmann know-nothingism that manically defies reason, I can't help concluding (pace Einstein) that God spends entirely too much time playing dice with the universe.<p></p></p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter-->Robert Becker is a freelance writer and blogger at TheSmirkingChimp.com </div></div></div>
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:00:01 -0700Robert Becker, The Smirking Chimp666842 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & PoliticsMediaTea Party and the Rightkarl rovemichele bachmanntea partyhugo mercierdan sperberpatricia cohen